‘Made the whole room smile and laugh’
Victims remembered as caring, ‘vibrant’ and a selfless hero
Friends and family on Monday mourned the 10 people killed in Buffalo, New York, when a gunman opened fire at a busy supermarket in what the FBI is investigating as a racially motivated hate crime.
Thirteen people were shot Saturday afternoon at a Tops Friendly Markets store in a historic neighborhood on the city’s Near East Side. Eleven of the people shot were Black and two were white.
Authorities released the names of the victims Sunday evening, among them a security guard hailed as a hero for trying to stop the gunman and a deacon who often drove shoppers home. Their ages range from 32 to 86.
Aaron Salter Jr.
Salter, 55, was a retired police lieutenant who spent decades with the Buffalo Police Department. He was working as a security guard at the Tops store when the shooting occurred, Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said.
Salter, of Lockport, New York, fired multiple shots and struck the gunman, who wore body armor. The gunman returned fire, killing Salter, police said.
Gramaglia described Salter as a “beloved” security guard and “a hero in our eyes” for his actions.
“He was a hero who tried to protect people in the store,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown told CNN on Sunday.
Salter’s former colleagues with the Police Department said his heroism in the face of danger did not come as a shock to them.
“It’s not surprising to me, at all, that he did what he did yesterday,” retired Lt. Steven Malkowski, who was Salter’s supervisor when they worked in the Police Department’s Traffic Division, told The Buffalo News. “People’s lives were in danger, and he was probably the only person who was in there that could help and save people.”
Ruth Whitfield
Whitfield, 86, was shopping at the Tops store when she was shot and killed, according to her son, Garnell. Her daughter, Robin, described her mother as her “best friend,” who took her on fishing and camping trips frequently.
She stopped for groceries after visiting her husband at a nursing home, a visit she made every day, her son said.
“She didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that,” Garnell Whitfield said Monday. “What do we tell our father? ...
How do we tell him the love of his life, his primary caretaker, the person who kept him alive for the last eight years, how do we tell him that she’s gone?”
Whitfield, who was from Buffalo, had four children and eight grandchildren. She was a member of the Durham Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church for 50 years, The New York Times reported, citing her daughter-in-law Cassietta Whitfield.
“For her to be taken from us and taken from this world by someone who is just full of hate for no reason ... is very hard for us to handle right now,” Garnell Whitfield said Monday at a news conference. “We’re not just hurting. We’re angry, we’re mad. This shouldn’t have happened.”
Pearl Young
Young, 77, of Buffalo, was grocery shopping after grabbing lunch with her sister-in-law when she was shot and killed, AL.com reported. When Young’s adult son, Damon, arrived at the store to pick up his mother, he was met with sirens and police cars in the parking lot, her niece, Jacqueline Wright, told the news outlet.
At her church, Young taught Sunday school, led youth groups and was known for cooking large pots of vegetable soup, The Buffalo News reported.
Young was from Alabama, and she ran a food pantry in the Central Park neighborhood near the supermarket, feeding those in need for more than 25 years.
“Even if it was nothing but soup and bread, whatever she could do, she would just always avail herself to help the people,” her brother-in-law, Bishop Glenwood Young, told The Buffalo News. “That’s what she was noted for. … Her life was full of giving.”
Katherine ‘Kat’ Massey
Massey, 72, of Buffalo, was a civil rights and education advocate, her friend and former Erie County legislator Betty Jean Grant told The Buffalo News.
Her sister, Barbara, stood outside the Tops story for hours, dialing Kat’s phone in hopes she would pick up. That evening, she discovered Kat had died.
“She was a beautiful soul,” Barbara Massey told The Buffalo News.
Last year, Massey wrote a letter in The Buffalo News in support of more federal regulation of guns, touching on urban street violence and mass shootings.
“There needs to be extensive federal action/legislation to address all aspects of the issue,” she wrote. “Current pursued remedies mainly inspired by mass killings – namely, universal background checks and banning assault weapons – essentially exclude the sources of our city’s gun problems. Illegal handguns, via out of state gun trafficking, are the primary culprits.”
Roberta Drury
Drury, 32, of Buffalo, had returned home to live with her mother, Dezzelynn McDuffie, and was helping her brother recover from a bone marrow transplant, WIVB-TV reported. Drury was the youngest person who was killed.
Amanda Drury told The New York Times her sister was “vibrant” and “always was the center of attention and made the whole room smile and laugh.”
Heyward Patterson
Patterson, 67, was a deacon at a Buffalo church and had gone to a soup kitchen before going to the Tops store, where he often offered to drive people home with their bags. Pastor Russell Bell of State Tabernacle Church of God in Christ said Bell cleaned the church and would do whatever was needed.
“From what I understand, he was assisting somebody putting their groceries in their car when he was shot and killed,” Bell said.
Patterson was a regular at church, The Buffalo News reported.
“Whatever he had, he’d give it to you,” Tirzah Patterson, his wife of 13 years, told the news outlet. “You ask, he’ll give it. If he don’t got it, he’ll make a way to get it or send you to the person that can give it to you. He’s going to be missed a lot.”
Leonard Lane, the president of Buffalo F.A.T.H.E.R.S., worships at the church and told WIVB that Patterson “loved God, loved his family, loved serving the community. He did it every chance he could get.”
Celestine Chaney
Chaney, 65, of Buffalo, was a breast cancer survivor, which prompted her family to ask people to wear pink ribbons in her honor. She shopped twice a month with her only son, Wayne Jones. According to The New York Times, Chaney was a single mother who worked at a suit manufacturer, then made baseball caps, before retiring.
She went to Tops supermarket Saturday to pick up ingredients to make her favorite strawberry shortcake, Jones told Insider. Jones said he usually accompanied his mom grocery shopping but stayed behind Saturday because he was recovering from knee surgery.
“We went grocery shopping, that was what we did. As she got older, I’d take her grocery shopping,” he told Insider. “The one time we didn’t go together, there’s a tragedy.”
Andre Mackneil
Mackneil, 53, of Auburn, New York, was in town visiting relatives and was picking up a surprise birthday cake for his grandson.
“He never came out with the cake,” Clarissa Alston-McCutcheon said of her cousin. He was “just a loving and caring guy – loved family, was always there for his family.”
Geraldine Talley
Talley, 62, worked as an executive assistant for years and was famous for her cheesecake, People reported.
Her niece, Kesha Chapman, told People that Talley was “the sweetest person.”
Talley “loved everybody. She was always smiling. She didn’t like confrontation. She wanted everything to be easy and full of love,” Chapman said.
Talley was one of nine siblings, “an amazing sister, mother, aunt,” her younger sister, Kaye Chapman-Johnson, told ABC News.
“Our sister, we had so many plans together, so many plans, and everything has just been stripped away from us,” Chapman-Johnson said.
Margus Morrison
Morrison, 52, was from Buffalo, according to police. He was a father of three, Morrison’s mother told ABC 7 Buffalo.
Morrison was an active bus aide for Buffalo schools since February 2019, Ka’Ron Barnes, special assistant to the superintendent for community relations, told USA TODAY.